All Fall Down
by Ceiphied Knight
Summary: Lost till you're found, swim till you drown, know that we all fall down... Halloween story!


**ALL FALL DOWN**

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_Dear Journal,_

_I rarely make entries in here anymore, but I find I lack things to write about. On the rare occasion that something new and interesting does occur, I'm certainly far too distracted to put it to paper._

_Today, however, is different. Today is my birthday. I believe I am now 200 years old, counting my human years._

_It seems that all the literature on chimeras was inaccurate. There are no other chimeras as perfectly fused as myself, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Rather than aging at half the rate of a full human, it seems the combination of lesser demon and ageless golem has made me ageless, myself. My life span is questionable, but at this point I don't show any signs of succumbing to old age any time soon._

_And, frankly, I'm sick of it._

_

* * *

_

Zelgadis Greywords closed the heavy leather journal he had been writing in, off and on, for the past hundred years.

On the cover was a lovely, though faded, gold embossing of the Seyruun royal crest.

Zelgadis ran his stony fingers over the symbol very gently, as if caressing a lover. His smile was sad, because he knew the book he held was one of the last things left of the once great kingdom of Seyruun.

He placed the book back into a hiding place underneath a floorboard of his modest house.

Modest on the outside, anyway. Inside, beneath the one story level containing simple living quarters and a kitchen, he had furnished a hidden laboratory. It was there that he decided to head, since the thought of Seyruun had made him wistful.

In the darkness of his lab, Amelia would have feared for him. She would have said that, perhaps, he should be careful not to turn into his famous great-grandfather. Obsession was a dangerous thing. And, if Rezo had been any indication, so was uncommon longevity.

But Amelia wasn't there. Zelgadis hadn't held her, made love to her, drank in the sight of her, for over a hundred years.

They had both watched with great sadness as their other friends passed on. Sylphiel was actually first. Though a great healer, herself, the priestess had succumbed to an illness that no other could heal. Well, perhaps one person could have, but he was long dead. Next was Zangulus, killed protecting what was most precious to him.

When the wars began to suppress magic-users, no one understood why an attack was launched upon Xoana. At least, not at first. Zangulus was killed, and his wife and children were taken prisoner. That action did exactly what it was meant to do.

It had infuriated Lina Inverse.

Lina blew into the war camps like a wild banshee, and the tall blonde swordsman at her side made an intimidating shadow.

Most of the warriors hadn't survived. Lina didn't stop until she'd been satiated, and Martina and the children had been freed.

Martina then took refuge in Seyruun Palace.

No one dared attack Seyruun for a very long time.

Taforashia was next. Their prince was known to be a very powerful sorcerer, though a bit hindered by his...unusual condition.

Zelgadis has always empathized deeply with Pokota.

They hadn't taken him easily. It took the assassination of his beloved father that drive Prince Posel to such despair that they were able to capture him and permanently destroy his small form.

Lina had appeared again. She'd ranted and raved and thrown Dragon Slaves wildly, shrieking about them killing the wrong person's friends.

All the while, Lina had no idea that there was one thing on the entire Orb she couldn't control.

Gourry fell ill.

He'd spent his last days in Seyruun, under the guise of the best priests, priestesses and healers on the continent.

Filia had arrived with little Val. She was able to make the swordsman more comfortable with her Holy Magic, and even the young Ancient Dragon showed signs of powerful magic...but whatever had killed Gourry was a force unto itself.

It broke Lina. That much was certain. She began walking northwest the morning Gourry was buried, and was never seen or heard from again.

Amelia would often mention Lina, worried for her friend. She would tell Zelgadis that they should send a search party. Her husband of many years would smile and whisper that Lina Inverse did not want to be found.

Zelgadis always knew Lina in ways the others didn't. He always knew when she was plotting something in that devious little head of hers. She was one of the most brilliant sorceresses he'd ever met, and he was honored to have known her and called her friend.

But her loss was nothing...NOTHING...compared to what happened next.

Zelgadis and Amelia had been preparing to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Amelia still wasn't that old, as far as matriarchs went. She was just shy of 70, but it had been apparent for decades that her husband wasn't aging at the same rate she was, if at all. He had also never been able to give her any children.

But she always assured him that it didn't matter to her. She would say that she'd loved him before she even knew what love truly was, and that he was her greatest joy.

He hadn't deserved her. Not ever.

The attack came at night.

Zelgadis had woken first, his sensitive hearing picking up the sounds of an intruder in the royal chambers he shared with Amelia. He had looked down at his sleeping wife, her hair flecked with silver but her face still so youthful, and he'd smiled.

He'd gotten out of bed quietly, with every intention of taking care of the intruder himself.

Perhaps he had been complacent. He blamed himself, of course.

The assassin had grabbed him from behind and held him around the neck with a grip that couldn't have been entirely human.

He was held fast as another attacker appeared.

"The famous Prince Consort," The attacker had snickered. "I have something special for you." Then he'd held up a sword that looked ancient and like it would fall apart at any moment.

Zelgadis had recognized it immediately.

"Where did you get that, you bastard?" the chimera had choked out.

"Oh, just found it lying around. Buried with some dead guy out in the royal cemetery."

Zelgadis growled and gnashed his teeth in rage. The men had desecrated Gourry's grave to retrieve the enchanted Blast Sword, which they had buried with him.

"VILLAINS!" Had been the cry of indignation from the bedroom doorway. Zelgadis had stopped breathing.

Not her. Not now.

Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, all pomp and righteousness even at her age, strode into the room with a spell at the ready.

"Unhand my husband," She'd ordered in a voice that left no question that she was royalty.

That's when the third man had appeared. It was as if he'd melted into the room from a shadow, and plunged a blade through Amelia's back and out her chest.

Straight through the heart.

And in that moment, Zelgadis had died.

* * *

The chimera lit some oil lamps in his laboratory and checked the potion he had been brewing for weeks.

"Almost done," he whispered to himself.

He had barely escaped with his own life that night. The war on magic made a creature like him Public Enemy #1, not counting Mazoku. Then again, the Mazoku seemed content to sit the whole thing out. That bastard Xellos was probably more than happy to watch the humans destroy themselves.

Just a few more minutes...

Zelgadis picked up an old photograph of Amelia that he always kept near him. He brushed his lips against it, then sat it back down next to his potion.

"Here we go," he murmured as he scooped some of the bubbling potion into a cast iron cup.

Holding the cup in one hand, and retrieving Amelia's photo with the other, Zelgadis took one last deep breath and drank the potion down to the very last drop.

Moments later, nothing remained of Zelgadis Greywords.

* * *

Lina Inverse hadn't aged much since she was 30. Because that was when she'd gone off her rocker and began researching ways to bring the dead back to life. She was so full of black magic and chaos magic that it was no wonder she's accidentally stumbled upon her own immortality.

It was her own personal hell.

She was approaching her bicentennial, had never loved another since Gourry, and was constantly hiding from witch-hunters.

It was not a great life.

It was unseasonably cold on the day she found herself outside of what used to be Seyruun proper.

The sorceress stumbled upon a small house, more like a cabin, that seemed to have been abandoned. She was cold and it looked like rain, so she decided to take her chances inside.

When she opened the door, there was no question the house hadn't been used in years.

It gave her an eerie feeling, but it was still better than the cold, so she walked inside and closed the door behind her.

"Lighting," she whispered the simple spell and illuminated the small living area.

The first thing she noticed was the bookcase. It was filled to the brim with old tomes that looked like the kind of thing that had been outlawed a century earlier.

Creeping closer, Lina gasped at the titles. They were books on magic theory, all right. Dangerous books. White magic, black magic, holy magic, Shamanism, alchemy...

Chimeras.

Lina pulled at the well-worn book on chimeras, but it did not come off the self. In fact, it only came halfway out of its place with a strange clicking sound.

Then the entire case of shelves began to move. They slid to the side to reveal a dark doorway, with what looked to be a staircase leading down.

"Curiouser and curiouser..." Lina mumbled to herself, and began descending the stairs.

She saw a few oil lamps in the dim light of her spell, so she lit those with some low-level fireballs and gazed around the room.

It was obviously a lab of some kind. Tubes and pots that had once contained suspicious liquids were everywhere. There were papers strew all over every piece of desk space, all with notes scribbled on them.

And in the center of it all, was a small pile of blue-ish gray dust on the floor.

Lina approached it slowly, so as not to disturb it. It gave her a chill down to her bones.

The pile shone a bit in the lamplight, and Lina could make out that it was stone. Stone that had, somehow, been transformed into a very fine powder.

Then something else caught her eye. Something lay atop the pile, and Lina gingerly reached down to grab it.

Holding it up, tears immediately sprang to her eyes.

It was an old photo of a pretty young woman with short dark hair and big blue eyes. You couldn't tell their shade of blue from the sepia of the photograph, but Lina knew. She also knew of justice speeches and adventures with all her friends.

Back when they were together. Back when things were simpler, and they were happy.

But they would never be together again. Something like that, once lost, can't be regained. She knew that now.

Lina finally let the tears flow freely, throwing herself to her knees by the pile of dusty stone and weeping openly onto Amelia's picture.

She finally collapsed, still on her knees and barely holding herself up with her hands on the floor. One hand found its way into the dust and she balled a bit of it up into her fist.

"Oh, Zel..." She whispered, then began sobbing again.

* * *

That was how they found her, three years later. Soldiers sent to apprehend the witch, Lina Inverse, tracked her last known whereabouts to a shack outside of the forgotten town of Seyruun.

Down in the depths of that shack, in a hidden room, they found the bones of a petite woman wrapped around what looked to be a pile of powered stone and still clutching a wrinkled and blotchy photograph of someone the soldiers didn't recognize.

It would seem, for all her magic power, even a witch could still die of starvation.

Suddenly, the wind picked up and blew down the stairs like a ghost, putting out every lamp and torch in the room.

Grown men screamed like little girls.

It took several minutes of fumbling, but the soldiers managed to get the room mostly re-lit.

There was no pile of dust, no skeleton, and no photograph.

Everything was gone.

THE END.

_**Happy Halloween!**_


End file.
